From testimony by Republican fundraiser Michael Scanlon at Wednesday's Republican-run Senate hearings:

Do you people get it yet? You're the "wackos" according to your own people.

You've been played.

Incidentally, from the same poll (and especially for all those wingnut radio hosts who have told me that they don't talk TreasonGate because "Americans don't care about the issue"), here's the numbers of those who found the following scandals to be of either "Great Importance" or "Some Importance" and, parenthetically, the dates on which the polls were taken:

Watergate (5/73): 78%
Iran-Contra (2/87): 81%
Whitewater (3/94): 49%
Clinton-Lewinsky (1/98): 62%
CIA Leak (now): 86%

From Rolling Stone:

See the full story for several swell quotes from our friends John Byrne of RAW STORY and Arianna of HuffPo.

From Newsweek...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Libby pleaded 'not guilty' at his arraignment earlier this morning. It looks like Cheney will have to testify. While he might be allowed to submit pre-recorded video testimony, Chris Matthews said "It looks like he's going to have to sit in the chair." This White House will strongly oppose the idea of Cheney testifying under oath in open court.

The following video clip has the statement of Libby's lawyer as they left court. Chris Matthews analyzes the risk for Cheney, Rove and The White House.

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Newsweek and The Washington Post are reporting an uncertain future for Karl Rove. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek postulates that Rove could lose his security clearance:

The Washington Post has learned that some White House aids and top Republicans are expressing doubts about Karl Rove's future:

The Raw Story has obtained a letter from Democratic Senators calling for a "thorough housecleaning" in Cheney's office.

Once again, blogger/White House correspondent, Eric Brewer, holds feet to fire. Read the below, from his questions at today's WH Press Gaggle, and ask yourself if it sounds like McClellan is dodging anything. Anything at all...

Brewer has much more, including background on the forged Iraq/Niger documents hoax (which is quickly where this thing may well be going) and his questioning about it today as well to National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley.

Keep up the good work, Eric!

Guest blogged by David Edwards

President Jimmy Carter appeared on the NBC's Today Show this morning to promote his new book Our Endangered Values.

President Carter spoke about several of the many scandals that the Republicans and Bush White House are now facing. In particular, Carter holds strong views against torture, the outing of Valerie Plame and the misused intelligence and lies prior to the invasion of Iraq.

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UPDATE: Transcript added below...

While it may not be "breaking news" that Rush Limbaugh is a liar, it's important that somebody hold him accountable for it. Today it's our turn, we guess.

Rush spent virtually the entire first hour of his show today ranting and raving and spitting and spewing that Democrats have "lost touch with all reality."

His claim, it seems, is based on the Democrats' invoking of Rule 21, which shut down the Senate to a closed door session in which the Dems, in a rare moment of having discovered a spine, called upon Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KA) to complete his promised investigation into the Bush Administration use and/or misuse of pre-war intelligence. That would be the investigation that Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, decided (for some reason) to put off until after last year's Presidential Election, but has --- in the full year since --- all but succeeded in forgetting about.

Of course, Rush knows full well that it's not the Dems, in this case, who have "lost touch with all reality," but he's counting on his listeners to be so uninformed as to believe anything he says. He has good reason to count on that, since a) he's been misinforming them by creating his own fantastical version of "reality" for years and b) the Corporate Mainstream Media has completely abrogated their responsibility to report on these matters to the American People with anything that even resembles thoroughness or accuracy for the past five years.

So it's very easy, as we wrote about recently at HuffPo for Rush and his ilk to get away with spinning their "Dems-Out-Of-Touch-With-Reality" scam on the American People. And, for that, we can thank the Media for their delinquency, and the Democrats for their years-long failure to stand up to thugs and liars like Rush and Bush and make sure the truth (the real one, not the phony Rush/Bush version) is understood.

Case in point: On Monday morning, at the top of his first show since the indictment against Scooter Libby came down last Friday afternoon, Rush was able to come on the air and out and out lie to his audience about Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment and press conference. Rush quoted Fitzgerald as having said at the press conference: "Despite all of our investigation, we did not find any evidence of the outing of a covert agent."

Since we don't need to lie or mislead, here is the precise audio clip [mp3] of Rush lying to America, and here's the text of what he said precisely...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Thousands are attending Rosa Parks' funeral in Detroit. CNN has had great coverage. MSNBC has also aired a good deal of highlights. Fox News... not so much.

Not surprisingly, Bill Clinton gave a touching speech. There were so many other moving speeches. We found special meaning in the words of Rep. John Conyers, who gave a job to Rosa Parks. He also reminds us about the problems that Americans, black and otherwise, still have in ensuring that their votes are actually counted and their voices are, therefore, heard...

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The full transcript of Conyers' speech follows...

Click the graphic to see the video.

As a side note, an emailer sent the following text of a sign seen at the massive recent D.C. protests:

What do you know? When Democrats step up and fight for what is right, they actually accomplish something! Who knew?

Little time to go into detail today, so I'll simply link to the NY Times report here, quote a quick passage, and let you know that I'll have more to say on all of these things before too long. As always.

UPDATE: Great breaking video on all of the above at Crooks & Liars.

It's been nearly a week and a half since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its 107-page report [PDF] confirming what many of us have been reporting for what seems like forever: That electronic voting machines are not secure, are hackable, and employ secret software that is frequently neither certified nor adequately inspected.

The GAO report, which The BRAD BLOG broke on October 20th, confirms that "[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

Furthermore, it was released in tandem with a joint bi-partisan news release which lauded the report. The extremely rare joint news release was issued by six high-level U.S. Congressmen (three R's and three D's), all Committee chairmen and ranking minority members, including the Chair and ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

And yet, not a single wire service (AP, Reuters, UPI, AFP, et al) nor the NY Times nor the Washington Post has even run a single paragraph on the landmark GAO report or even the news release to our knowledge. Not one. Even though many of those same outlets reported on numerous occassions that the claims now confirmed as very real by the GAO were little more than "conspiracy theories" forwarded by "leftwing blogs" such as this one.

A few tech-related websites ran articles on the GAO report (ComputerWorld here, the UK's PC Advisor here, FCW here) as did The BRAD BLOG, of course, and several other sites that still give a damn about democracy in America (Free Press article here, Truthout article here to name a few). But that's largely it.

Congrats to Richard M. Cohen III and the University of N. Carolina's The Daily Tar Heel and Ian Hoffman of Inside Bay Area for virtually the only print newspaper coverage in all of America (at least that we were able to find).

CNN reported on the GAO report...on November, 24 2004 in an article headlined "GAO to investigate election complaints". That was, of course, back when the investigation was first announced. Now that the investigation is actually completed, apparently CNN has no interest in reporting the results discovered.

We'll have to assume that the lack of security and validity of millions of American votes, including votes both cast and lost in the last Presidential Election, are of little interest to the Mainstream Corporate Media. And that raises the question: Just what are they interested in and why? And what possible excuse could all of those mainstream media outlets have for not running even the tiniest notice of such an important report following a year long investigation which directly concerns the very future of American democracy?

At an emailer's suggestion, we've contacted the good folks at the excellent Editor & Publisher about this to see if they might be interested in looking into the matter and perhaps getting a few of the wire service folks and mainstream newspapers to go on record with an explanation as to why a landmark non-partisan government report, accompanied by an extremely rare joint press release concerning the most basic element of democracy --- the vote --- is not newsworthy in their minds.

We'd encourage you to do the same. Editor & Publisher welcomes your polite and encourging email at Letters@EditorAndPublisher.com.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

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Our man in the White House, Eric Brewer (the only real blogger inside the press room) of BTC News stood tough in today's gaggle in the wake of Scottie's dodges and alongside the bulk of his paid brethren who largely took the Alito nomination bait so cleverly fed to them by the crooks who'd rather do anything than explain why they seem to have lied this country into an endless and pointless war.

Brewer's question:

See Eric's coverage to find out what --- and if --- Scottie answered...